Media Critique #32 - Terror and the Media_

The terror war has gone global. How does this media coverage affect Israel?

The media is filled with articles on the recent terror attacks in New York and Washington. Many themes revolve around Israel and the wider Middle East conflict. In writing letters to the editor, here are key points to incorporate:

a) There is a myth that radical Moslems are angry with America because of its association with Israel. In truth, as reported in The New York Times' profile of Bin Laden, "One Man and a Global Web of Violence," the global jihad is "against the corrupt secular governments of the Muslim Middle East and the Western powers that supported them." (January 14, 2001)

b) In enduring months of domestic terrorism, Israel has been saying that no other country would tolerate such a horrifying threat to the safety of its citizens. But international voices decried Israel's policies of pre-emptive defense. Now that the rest of the world better understands the problem, it will hopefully appreciate Israel's need to take measures to protect its citizens from Palestinian terror. Indeed, Israeli targeted killings will look tame compared to the expected American military response.

This situation is mindful of world condemnation when Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981. Ten years later, when Western forces squared off against Saddam Hussein, there was great appreciation for Israel's foresight in eliminating the Iraqi nuclear threat.

c) According to a CBS poll, two-thirds of Americans think the U.S. should retaliate even if innocent people are killed. Contrast this to world reaction when Israel surgically eliminates Palestinian terrorists, and an innocent bystander is occasionally killed as well. Why is Israel subject to a double-standard?

d) The strategic bond between Israel and the U.S. will now be stronger than ever, as they join in fighting the common enemy of Islamic terrorist fanaticism, which seeks to replace democracy as the reigning world system.

e) Upon hearing the news of the American carnage, Palestinians rejoiced, danced and handed out candies. This information has been largely suppressed in the media due to Palestinian intimidation of journalists. In order to protect the cornerstone of democracy, freedom of the press, these images must be published, and the Palestinians must be exposed for seeking to deny the free flow of information. (more info below)

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FISK STOOPS TO NEW LOWS

The horrors of the terrorism could not be rationalized. Or so we thought.

Robert Fisk of The Independent (UK) defied the civilized world and blamed Israel, America, and even the defeat of the Ottoman Empire for the WTC terrorist attack.

Fisk's September 12 column, "The Wickedness and Awesome Cruelty of a Crushed and Humiliated People," proclaimed: "...This is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps."

"...America has bankrolled Israel's wars for so many years that it believed this would be cost-free. No longer so."

Fisk claims that there will be an "immoral" attempt to "obscure the historical wrongs and the injustices that lie behind yesterday's firestorms." Who is the immoral one here -- democracies such as the United States and Israel, or those who support the terrorists?

(1) After a two-month stint in Israel, The New York Times' Clyde Haberman returned to New York and the fury of the mega-terrorism. His September 12 column is required reading: "When the Unimaginable Happens, and It's Right Outside Your Window":Mhttp://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/nyregion/12NYC.html

"Do you get it now?"

"It is a question that many Israelis wanted to ask yesterday of America and the rest of the finger-pointing world. Not in a smart-alecky manner. Not to say, "We told you so." It was simply a question for those who, at a safe remove from the terrorism that Israelis face every day, have damned Israel for taking admittedly harsh measures to keep its citizens alive...

"In Israel, there is no such thing as six degrees of separation. In a country that small, two degrees is more like it. If you don't know a bombing victim personally, you almost surely know someone who does. You may safely bet that an extraordinary number of New Yorkers will have the same relationship to someone whose life was cruelly extinguished yesterday in Lower Manhattan."

Gove warns: "The talks which the West demands that Israel continues to hold with the Palestinian Authority will only confer further legitimacy on a terrorist state. It is not just that Arafat's territory harbours terrorists. It IS terrorist. Militarily, culturally, spiritually..."

"Of all the uses of terror, none in the past several decades has been more faddishly popular (at least on the left), and none has been accorded more respectful media coverage, than that of the Palestinians. Yes, Palestinian terrorists and terrorists on behalf of the Palestinian cause murdered innocents -- but that was understandable, the argument went. The Palestinians had been wronged. They were oppressed. They were weak. What else could they do?"

...[T]he monstrous evil of Sept. 11... rose, with hideous logic, directly from the philosophy that the leaders and supporters of the Palestinian cause have long embraced and still embrace -- a philosophy that accepts the murder of innocents as a legitimate expression of a legitimate struggle. If it is morally acceptable to murder, in the name of a necessary blow for freedom, a woman on a Tel Aviv street, or to blow up a disco full of teenagers, or to bomb a family restaurant -- then it must be morally acceptable to drive two jetliners into a place where 50,000 people work. In moral logic, what is the difference? If the murder of innocent people is for whatever reason excusable, it is excusable; if it is legitimate, it is legitimate. If acceptable on a small scale, so too on a grand."

Upon hearing news of the WTC attacks, Palestinians in Beirut, Nablus and eastern Jerusalem rejoiced, danced and handed out candies.

But that's only part of the story.

Palestinian groups, including the Arafat-backed Tanzim and the Palestinian police, then used intimidation and violence to prevent journalists from distributing the photos and videos of these celebrations.

One cameraman was kidnapped and threatened with death if his footage was aired. Ahmed Abdel Rahman, Arafat's Cabinet secretary, said the Palestinian Authority "cannot guarantee the life" of the cameraman if the footage was broadcast. Armed Palestinians also trapped foreign photojournalists inside a Nablus hotel on September 11 while thousands took to the streets in celebration of the U.S. terror attacks.

According to Israeli Radio correspondent Danny Zaken, at least two news organizations had footage of the celebrations in Nablus and Ramallah that showed Palestinian policemen shooting joyfully in the air. Zaken reported that the news agencies refused to broadcast the material after senior officials in the Palestinian Authority contacted the heads of the news organizations, threatening the lives of news personnel and warning an end of access to PA sources if they broadcast the reports.

Obviously, since these images portray Palestinian affinity with the fervently anti-American tactics of the WTC terrorists, they greatly damage the Palestinian cause in the eyes of the world.

Asked for his reaction to the pictures of celebrating Palestinians, Secretary of State Colin Powell told Fox News, "It is a searing image in my mind."

Did your TV station and newspaper show the despicable scenes of Palestinian celebration? Or did they succumb to intimidation?

Even the Guardian (UK), the stalwart supporter of all things Palestinian, led its article ("Palestinian Joy -- Global Condemnation") with this:

"Palestinian gunmen at refugee camps in Lebanon fired into the air in celebration yesterday as the rest of the world united in revulsion at the 'monstrous' and 'abhorrent' attacks in the US. In East Jerusalem, people distributed sweets wrapped in the colours of the Palestinian tricolour and sounded car horns."http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,550498,00.html

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About the Author

HonestReporting, with 140,000 members, is the largest organization fighting media bias in the Middle East conflict. In 2006, HonestReporting launched Media Central, a Jerusalem center providing support services for foreign journalists in Israel and the region.

I've been striving to get more into spirituality. But it seems that every time I make some progress, I find myself slipping right back to where I started. I'm getting discouraged and feel like a failure. Can you help?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

Spiritual slumps are a natural part of spiritual growth. There is a cycle that people go through when at times they feel closer to God and at times more distant. In the words of the Kabbalists, it is "two steps forward and one step back." So although you feel you are slipping, know that this is a natural process. The main thing is to look at your overall progress (over months or years) and be able to see how far you've come!

This is actually God's ingenious way of motivating us further. The sages compare this to teaching a baby how to walk. When the parent is holding on, the baby shrieks with delight and is under the illusion that he knows how to walk. Yet suddenly, when the parent lets go, the child panics, wobbles and may even fall.

At such times when we feel spiritually "down," that is often because God is letting go, giving us the great gift of independence. In some ways, these are the times when we can actually grow the most. For if we can move ourselves just a little bit forward, we truly acquire a level of sanctity that is ours forever.

Here is a practical tool to help pull you out of the doldrums. The Sefer HaChinuch speaks about a great principle in spiritual growth: "The external awakens the internal." This means that although we may not experience immediate feelings of closeness to God, eventually, by continuing to conduct ourselves in such a manner, this physical behavior will have an impact on our spiritual selves and will help us succeed. (A similar idea is discussed by psychologists who say: "Smile and you will feel happy.")

That is the power of Torah commandments. Even if we may not feel like giving charity or praying at this particular moment, by having a "mitzvah" obligation to do so, we are in a framework to become inspired. At that point we can infuse that act of charity or prayer with all the meaning and lift it can provide. But if we'd wait until being inspired, we might be waiting a very long time.

May the Almighty bless you with the clarity to see your progress, and may you do so with joy.

In 1940, a boatload 1,600 Jewish immigrants fleeing Hitler's ovens was denied entry into the port of Haifa; the British deported them to the island of Mauritius. At the time, the British had acceded to Arab demands and restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. The urgent plight of European Jewry generated an "illegal" immigration movement, but the British were vigilant in denying entry. Some ships, such as the Struma, sunk and their hundreds of passengers killed.

If you seize too much, you are left with nothing. If you take less, you may retain it (Rosh Hashanah 4b).

Sometimes our appetites are insatiable; more accurately, we act as though they were insatiable. The Midrash states that a person may never be satisfied. "If he has one hundred, he wants two hundred. If he gets two hundred, he wants four hundred" (Koheles Rabbah 1:34). How often have we seen people whose insatiable desire for material wealth resulted in their losing everything, much like the gambler whose constant urge to win results in total loss.

People's bodies are finite, and their actual needs are limited. The endless pursuit for more wealth than they can use is nothing more than an elusive belief that they can live forever (Psalms 49:10).

The one part of us which is indeed infinite is our neshamah (soul), which, being of Divine origin, can crave and achieve infinity and eternity, and such craving is characteristic of spiritual growth.

How strange that we tend to give the body much more than it can possibly handle, and the neshamah so much less than it needs!